Domina banned on steam image.

To say that patch 1.3.25 of the indie gladiator sim Domina did little to improve players' experiences with the video game would be an understatement. In fact, it did quite the opposite, as it instead caused Steam to remove the game from the storefront entirely.

Earlier this morning, Valve's gaming hub removed Domina from the platform after the developer included a transphobic rant namedropping YouTuber and Twitch streamer Keffals in the patch notes for the game's latest update. The controversial rant can be read below in its entirety:

deadname: domina. Please don’t mention it any more. We only mention it here to say: don’t mention it any more. It’s totally normal to change the sex of a video game and NOT CONFUSING TO ANYBODY. Please do not be a bigot. If you are confused, please simply stop being confused and remember that DOMINA doesn’t exist and never did, but DOMINUS does exist, and always has, you just didn’t know you were playing a man, who was dressed as a woman, but now that we reveal it to you, you have NO RIGHT to feel deceived, the same way the poor drunk dudes who transvestites like Keffals had sexual intercourse with, without disclosing that they were a man, have no right to feel wronged and you’re a bigot for being confused or even mentioning something like that happening, let alone having an opinion about it.

This was, apparently, the final straw for Valve, which on two previous occasions had issues with the Domina dev treating his game's patch notes as a personal soapbox for things unrelated to the title.

In March earlier this year, the game made headlines after the developer went on an anti-mask rant that implied men wearing masks to protect against COVID-19 were afraid of getting laid. In May 2021, he also included a rant in the game's patch notes about men who watch too much porn.

Valve cited the targeting of another individual as its reason to cease its business relationship with the Domina dev, noting that he had been warned about such behavior in the past.

Keffals has notably been at the center of a month-long campaign against lolcow gossip site Kiwi Farms after she has been swatted and doxxed multiple times in the past month. She has continuously argued and compiled alleged evidence that members of Kiwi Farms are purportedly responsible for the attacks and has pressured the service Cloudflare, which provides DDoS protection to Kiwi Farms, to drop the site from their list of clients.

On Wednesday, the day of the Domina dev's rant, Cloudflare announced it would not drop Kiwi Farms, using the argument, "Just as the telephone company doesn’t terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things, we have concluded in consultation with politicians, policy makers, and experts that turning off security services because we think what you publish is despicable is the wrong policy."

In response to the Domina dev story, Keffals tweeted, "Bro, keep me out of your midlife crisis."


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Comments 21 total

SardonicRainboom

Pretty sure Acquitted had transphobic content in the actual game. Any chance they'll do the same to it?

0

SSmotzer

Sometimes death of the author can't come soon enough.

0

Peanut970

Look, I don't care about people's opinions on things, they can think what they want, as brilliant or stupid as they may be, but there's a time and place for everything. Posting your own personal opinions on your Steam game's page is not the right place to do it. People come there to talk about the game, not about whatever the dev takes personal issues with.

4

big thonk

and yet they still haven't removed dogshit scam games from the steam stores, including ones like Nether that were taken offline years ago but still charge money

0

Nedhitis

Western game devs keep your political beliefs out of your videogames challenge (IMPOSSIBLE).

6

A Concerned Rifleman

On the one hand, Keffals is a creep who uses Trans people as a personal shield for life-destroying actions.

On the other, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

15

immensedata

Keffals is a creep that approves of rape by deception, loves deplatforming people, is misogynistic, ran a grooming discord that sent collars to underage boys proclaiming they're the "property" of the server, and promotes a site that teaches "DIY HRT" – making hormones in a bathtub to children. It's owner, Bobposting, has gleefully admitted to "pinkpilling many minors".

She is a horrible person that constantly goes on unhinged rants disguised as righeous fury. Well, it seems as if the Domina dev doesn't have the privilege to express his righeous fury. Banning this man isn't gonna make him love Keffals and trans people, it's gonna make it much worse, for him AND for trans acceptance.

9

Revic

You can express anger at someone for being a piece of shit without also being a transphobe. Heck, you just managed it pretty well yourself. No reason this dev couldn't have comported his "righteous fury" in a more sane manner. For a parallel example: You should hate Bill Cosby for being a rapist, not for being black. He's an asshole, but using racial slurs or racist jokes against him would make you an asshole too.

8

Nedhitis

He was using a feature meant for videogame patch notes and updates as his political soapbox. Regardless of the context, this is both against gamers' best interest and probably some kind of ToS infraction on Steam. If he needs to talk about it so bad, Twitter exists and I am sure he has an account there.

7

:̶.̶|̶:̶;̶

You say that as if Twitter won't ban you for this, even though you're correct that it would be the correct toilet for this otherwise.

He'll probably go and make the signal to noise ratio on 4chan worse than the rock fucking bottom it already is because that site has basically become the containment board for anything critical of the trans movement, whether it has a point or whether it's just inane hateful garbage.

1

Phhase

Damnnit. I liked that guy's music. You fell off, dude. Cmon.

0
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